instigation, contrived that Thomas and John Knox should be set at liberty, and on 6 Jan. 1616 Campbell of Calder, with the assistance of Sir Oliver Lambart [q. v.], captured Dunivaig. Some time during his lifetime Knox had carried off the two principal bells from the abbey of Icolmkill to Raphoe. These his successor, Bishop John Lesley, was by royal edict compelled to restore on 14 March 1635 (Collectanea de rebus Albanicis, p. 187).
Knox resigned the bishopric of the Isles in 1618, but continued bishop of Raphoe till his death on 27 March 1633. He married his cousin-german Elizabeth, daughter of William Knox of Silvielaod (though, by another account, the daughter of John Knox, merchant, in Ayr). By her he had three sons, Thomas, James, and George, and two daughters, Margaret, who married John Cunningham of Cambuskeith, son of James, seventh earl of Glencairn, and another, who married John Hamilton of Woodhall. The three sons took orders in the church. Thomas, the eldest, was educated at Glasgow University, where he graduated M.A. in 1608. He became incumbent of Sorabie in Tiree, and on 4 Aug. 1617 he was constituted dean of the Isles. In February 1619 he succeeded his father as bishop of the Isles, and in 1622 was appointed non-resident rector of the parish of Clandevadock in the diocese of Raphoe. He was B.D,, and died in 1626 without issue, and is reported to have been a man of learning and piety.
Knox's house, 26 High Street, Paisley, is said (Genealogical Memoirs of the Family of Knox, 1870) to be still standing, and in an oak panel over the chimney of the principal room are engraved his initials and those of his wife.
[C. Rogers's Genealogical Memoirs of the Family of Knox (Grampian Club), 1879; Collectanea de rebus Albanicis (Iona Club), 1830; Laing's Original Letters (Bannatyne Club), 1851; Book of the Thanes of Cawdor (Spalding Club), 1849; Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, vols. v-ix.; Donald Gregory's Hist. of the Western Highlands; Collections upon the lives of the Reformers {Maitland Club), 1834; Calderwood's Hist, of the Kirk; Spotiswood's Hist. of the Church; George Crawford's Hist. of Renfrewshire; Bishop Keith's Cat. of Scottish Bishops; Cotton's Fasti Eccl. Hib.; Reid's Hist. of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland; Russell and Prendergast's Cal. of State Papers, Ireland.]
KNOX, JOHN (1505–1572), Scottish reformer and historian, was born in 1505 at Giffordgate, Haddington, in a house opposite the east end of the abbey, on the other side of the Tyne from the burgh. It was standing in 1785, but has since been pulled down. The conjecture that his birthplace was in the neighbouring parish of Morham, founded on his statement that his ‘father, gudschir, and grandschir’ fought under the Earls of Bothwell, who had lands in that parish, but not in Haddington, is ingenious, but not proved so as to displace the argument of Laing in favour of Giffordgate. The reformer's father, William Knox, is supposed to have been a cadet of the family of Knox of Ranfurly in Renfrewshire. But the name is too common to support this descent, which is opposed by the fact that the reformer calls himself ‘of base condition,’ and is described as ‘of lineage small’ by John Davidson in the panegyrical poem published the year after his death, while his personal character indicates a burghal rather than a gentle ancestry. His mother was a Sinclair, and a note to one of his manuscript letters, signed John Sinclair, mentions ‘this was his mother's surname, whilk he wearit in time of trubell.’ A brother, William, mentioned in two of his letters and in his will, was a trader with England, and settled in Preston.
Knox was educated at the school of Haddington. In 1522 his name appears in the register of the university of Glasgow among the students incorporated on St. Crispin's day, 25 Oct. He was attracted to Glasgow by the fame of John Major [q. v.], himself born at Gleghornie, not far from Haddington, and probably educated at the burgh school. On 9 June 1523 Major was transferred to the university of St. Andrews; so Knox, unless he followed Major to that university, of which there is no proof, can have been his pupil only one session, yet this may have sufficed to disgust Knox, like Buchanan and other of Major's hearers, with the scholastic logic, of which he retained little except the argumentative spirit.
The name of Knox does not appear in the list of graduates of either university. The tradition that he was led by the study of Augustine and the fathers to abandon scholastic theology is so far confirmed by the citation in his writings of Augustine as ‘that learned Augustine,’ Chrysostom as ‘the ancient godlie writer,’ and Athanasius as ‘that notable servant of Jesus Christ.’ With Latin, still the language of education, he was of course familiar, though he rarely used it. He is the first, almost the only, great prose writer in the vernacular, though his Scotch has been criticised for its intermixture with English and French words and idioms. Of Hebrew he confessed his ignorance, but also ‘his fervent thirst to have sum entrance thairin’ (letter to Bishop of Durham), which
